HUMOR: OT: tobacco memories (not a whit about and iris)

All the talk about using tobacco leftovers as a spray has brought up some
amusing memories.

Whatever did happen to all those beautiful old spittoons that adorned every
courthouse lobby I wonder?  I remember them in plentiful supply (and usually
quite full) in our own small town courthouse.  But they've long since
disappeared.  I wonder where.  In this day and time, I doubt there are any
anywhere with the requisite residue residing it them.  Tobacco is now pretty
much not allowed beyond the outside entrance doors.

But decades ago, I recall the lethal and poisonous effects of nicotine being
a major topic for discussion.  This was in my itinerate days of being a
college student or recent post-college student, when your current abode
changed after pretty short durations.  Still I was always trying to grow
something green or blooming and with all the talk, one thing led to another.
If you've ever handled a wet filtered cigarette butt, it's amazing how much
water they will hold.  So I had the idea of using them mixed with potting
soil in order to maintain more moisture for longer periods of time in pots
(Austin, Texas is quite hot in the summer so keeping a pot moist is
important).  After collecting a very generous supply of these butts, I mixed
them into the potting mixture and planted (I can't remember what I growing
at that time - lots of different plants have come and gone during the
years).  I didn't like the result.  Butts float, so the top of the planted
pot was soon a solid sheet of butts.  Not deterred easily, I redid the whole
thing making sure the butts were well in the lower part of the soil with a
generous layer on top.  This worked, actually.  The plants thrived, the
moisture stayed in the pots longer.  The biggest liability remained the
floating aspect, so if the pot got really dry, the whole mass tended to
float up out of the pot until everything soaked up enough water.  After a
time, as healthy growing plants do, they outgrew the pots completely.  So
when it became time to repot, I dumped the whole plant out and shook off the
potting soil.  But not the butts.  Every butt had been penetrated by a root
that had grown through it, so all the butts were well attached.  Quite a
sight.  And one I found unpleasant enough that I gave up on using them
altogether.  However, from time to time, knowing it did work, I do consider
doing it again when I'm fooling with something to be grown in a pot.

But tobacco didn't always have the negative association we know today.  My
grandfather's three sisters all dipped snuff.  And, boy oh boy, were they
respectable.  I doubt there were many occasions when the First Baptist
Church didn't see them come through the door!  Tiny ladies, all three.  The
one that lived closes in a town down the road was the biggest.  Probably
somewhere around a hundred pounds when she was a tad plump.  It was a
pleasure to visit Aunt Willie and Uncle Jess.  They were poor beyond
comprehension by today's standards, I guess.  Operated a laundry for those
better off.  But our whole family used to go visit when me and my siblings
were small.  So we'd load in the car in the early fifties and drive over.
Six of us, me being the 2nd of three boys and the one sister.  We all loved
it.  The houses they lived in were smaller in total than most folks living
rooms today, but there can't be any that had bigger welcomes.  The only
problem was that all my grandfather's family were touchers.  That meant
being kissed.  I can still remember the struggle to avoid that snuffy kiss!
Impossible.  Six people, six snuff imprints.  That's the way of it.  How
such a tiny woman could manage that I don't know, but there wasn't ever a
miss.  After that, though, for the several hours one spent there, it was
sheer bliss.  Uncle Jess, thankfully, didn't kiss you.  No pinches of snuff
for him, he chewed tobacco.

That reminds of Jake Crawley.  A portly old farmer always in overalls with a
bit of a speech impediment, he was a fixture in the community I remember
around my grandparent's home.  Always with a wad of tobacco showing through
his cheek.  Maybe that was the speech impediment, but I don't think so.  My
grandparent's had moved in a new house and back then the whole community and
all the available nearby relatives turned out to help with the project.  So
working on the foundation so the house could be set down, there were all
those cinder blocks to be moved.  Being a helpful (isn't is nice not to
remember being in the way - I surely was) six year old, I was lugging those
cinder blocks to someone laying them out.  In doing so I had my first
experience of what a stinging scorpion can dish out.  Square in the palm of
my hand.  I remember the pain and the hollering I gave out after this event.
But Jake had the solution.  That cheek went empty and my wounded hand was
soon wrapped around a plug of tobacco the fingers could barely span.  He
assured me it would cure it all.  It did.  No more sounds, and sometime
around time for bed I was finally persuaded to let go that magical plug of
tobacco.

Odd, that a proposed grasshopper deterrent can trigger the memories, isn't
it?

Donald Eaves
donald@eastland.net
Texas Zone 7b, USA



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